Tag: Cancer

Journal Admits Monsanto Role In Reviews Of Glyphosate Cancer Risks

(Natural Blaze) The scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology has issued a rare “Expression of Concern” and requested corrections to articles it published that failed to fully disclose Monsanto’s role in reviews of glyphosate’s cancer risks.

The journal said all five articles it published in a 2016 supplemental issue titled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate” failed to include an accurate disclosure of the pesticide-maker’s involvement.

The five articles at issue were all highly critical of the 2015 finding by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.

“It’s deplorable that Monsanto was the puppet master behind the supposedly ‘independent’ reviews of glyphosate’s safety,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These papers were manufactured as a way to counteract the World Health Organization’s findings on glyphosate’s cancer risks. They could mislead the public in dangerous ways and should be completely retracted.”

Recommended: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The documents revealing Monsanto’s role in the reviews came to light during a trial that culminated last month when a jury found that exposure to glyphosate products was a “substantial” contributing factor to the terminal cancer of a California groundskeeper, who was subsequently awarded $289 million in damages.

Those documents exposed that Monsanto improperly edited the articles and directly paid some of the authors a consulting fee for their work.

In an October 2017 letter to the publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity and three other national environmental health groups demanded the articles be retracted.

Recommended: New Study Shows Glyphosate Does Cause Tumors and Birth Defects, and More

The Declaration of Interest statement that was originally published with the papers:

  • Failed to disclose that at least two panelists who authored the review worked as consultants for, and were directly paid by, Monsanto for their work on the paper;
  • Failed to disclose that at least one Monsanto employee extensively edited the manuscript and was adamant about retaining inflammatory language critical of the IARC assessment — against some of the authors’ wishes; the disclosure falsely stated that no Monsanto employee reviewed the manuscript.

Additionally, multiple internal emails from Monsanto indicated the pesticide maker’s willingness to ghostwrite or compile information for the authors of the reviews, dictate the scope of one of the reviews, and identify which scientists to engage or list as authors of the reviews.

In an email sent yesterday to the Center, a representative from the publisher of the articles, Taylor and Francis, wrote: “We note that, despite requests for full disclosure, the original Acknowledgements and Declaration of Interest statements provided to the journal did not fully represent the involvement of Monsanto or its employees or contractors in the authorship of the articles.”

Recommended: GMO Rice Approved While Other GMO Grasses Cannot Be Contained

Several of the authors issued apologies in the updated Declaration of Interest sections of three of the five review papers, including:

  • Keith R. Solomon (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Brusick (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Marilyn Aardema
  • Larry Kier (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Kirkland (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Gary Williams (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • John Acquavella (former Monsanto employee, has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • David Garabrant
  • Gary Marsh
  • Tom Sorahan (former Monsanto employee, has worked as consultant for Monsanto)
  • Douglas L. Weed (has worked as consultant for Monsanto)

Some of the details of the corrections include:

  • Another correction states that Monsanto scientist William Heydens “pointed out some typographical errors.” Based on the documents we have, Heydens was far more involved in drafting, editing and organizing the reviews than the correction indicates. In an email correspondence with Dr. Ashley Roberts of Intertek, Heydens admits to writing “a draft introduction chapter” for the series of reviews, then asks Roberts “who should be the ultimate author” of the introduction chapter he ghostwrote. Dr. Heydens’ full involvement in these reviews remains uncorrected despite the fact that many of his edits and revisions can be found in the published final manuscript.
  • The reviews were conceived as part of a company plan to discredit IARC well before the agency came to its conclusion that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. One of the plan’s stated goals was to “orchestrate outcry with IARC decision, ”while another plan made clear that the company sought a “WHO Retraction” and made it a priority to “invalidate relevance of IARC.” A Monsanto “Post-IARC Meeting” details several scientists that Monsanto pegged as potential authors. The meeting presentation also asks the question, “How much writing can be done by Monsanto scientists to help keep costs down?” In an email under the subject “Post-IARC Activities to Support Glyphosate,” Monsanto executive Michael Koch wrote that the review on animal data cited by IARC should be “initiated by MON as ghost writers,” and “this would be more powerful if authored by non-Monsanto scientists (e.g., Kirkland, Kier, Williams, Greim and maybe Keith Solomon.)
  • The authors of these papers cited previous reviews that were ghostwritten by Monsanto. In an email discussing the plan for the review papers, Heydens wrote, “An option would be to add Greim and Kier or Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall that is how we handled Williams, Kroes & Munro, 2000.”

Despite the misconduct that Taylor and Francis acknowledged in the Expression of Concern, the publisher has refused to issue a retraction for the papers, in contradiction to its own Corrections Policy, and has allowed the title of the supplemental issue to retain the phrase “an independent review.”

“This peek behind the Monsanto curtain raises serious questions about the safety of glyphosate,” said Donley. “Monsanto’s unethical behavior and the publisher’s response undermine scientific integrity and ultimately public health.”

Evidence continues to mount about the toxicity of glyphosate, not only to humans, but to the broader environment. Glyphosate was recently found to make honeybees more susceptible to infection from pathogens, implicating it as a contributing factor in worldwide bee declines.

Glyphosate Box [No Naturalblaze affiliation]

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Researchers Develop New Method To Inject Turmeric Compound Into Cancer Cells

Mainstream science is now openly trying to inject high-powered curcumin into tumors in order to kill cancer cells. But first they must solve the issue of insolubility…

Curcumin is the extract from turmeric that is studied for its effects on cancer and pain. Anecdotally, one person used high-powered curcumin to reverse their cancer after chemo failed. So it’s not whole turmeric that scientists would use, but its component curcumin.

Researchers think they have solved the problem of getting curcumin into the tumor to kill cancer stem cells and interestingly – they’re using platinum to do it. They think they have stumbled on an ideal anti-cancer drug.

Recommended: How To Use Turmeric To Kill Cancer

From University of Illinois College and Engineering:

In India and other countries in Southeast Asia, curcumin is often used as a spice in cooking, particularly chicken or fish. It is known for its therapeutic effect and as a way to kill germs present in raw meet. Recently, scientists have also discovered that curcumin, a naturally occurring substance isolated from the Curcuma long plant, to be an effective agent for killing cancer cells.

“Until now, however, curcumin is what we call in pharmaceutical science as a ‘false lead’ – it is therapeutic, but the full effect can’t be utilized because it’s poorly soluble in water,” noted Dipanjan Pan, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who leads the Laboratory of Materials in Medicine.

“When you try to deliver a drug, it requires solubility in water, otherwise it won’t flow through the bloodstream,” added Santosh Misra, a post-doctoral researcher working with Pan.

Recently, however, Pan’s laboratory collaborated with Peter Stang, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Chemical Society, and Distinguished Professor of chemistry at the University of Utah on ways to be able to render curcumin soluble, deliver it to infected tumors, and kill cancer cells. The team has created a sophisticated metallocyclic complex using platinum that has not only enabled curcumin’s solubility, but whose synergy has proven 100 times more effective in treating various cancer types such as melanoma and breast cancer cells than using curcumin and platinum agents separately. They published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

“It’s a combination of clever chemistry and nanoprecipitation utilizing host guest chemistry,” Pan explained. “We know that a drug is going to bind to a certain ‘host molecule’ if the proper pocket is present. We have shown here that a pumpkin-shaped macrocyclic molecule Cucurbituril by virtue of its glycoluril monomeric linkages, that attracts curcumin, which gets bound and comes off once it gets delivered to the cell. That is the key to demonstrating the effectiveness of the therapy and in solving a long-standing problem with curcumin’s insolubility.”

Recommended: How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes

“In order to make it available to the system, it was necessary to put curcumin in a larger complex where it can be soluble in water,” Misra said. “This complex has a very unique ability to take on different forms of material — from a spherical nanoparticle to longer elongated threads of nanometer size. In both cases, curcumin is present in the system, which what is important for to its medicinal value.”

“We knew platinum is a commonly used cancer therapeutic agent in the clinic,” Pan said in explaining the road to discovery. “We wanted to exploit that property as well in addition to curcumin. Our results demonstrate that curcumin works completely in sync with platinum and exert synergistic effect to show remarkable anticancer properties.”

The team detailed a hierarchical approach to solubilize a hydrophobic anti-cancer drug, curcumin in water via a combination of coordination-driven self-assembly and host-guest interactions.

The team detailed a hierarchical approach to solubilize a hydrophobic anti-cancer drug, curcumin in water via a combination of coordination-driven self-assembly and host-guest interactions.

Recommended: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Curcumin has shown to prevent the phosphorylation of STAT3, a well-known signaling pathway that triggers the growth of cancer cells and allows them to survive, in in vivo studies. The platinum-curcumin combination kills the cells by fragmenting its DNA.

Although the researchers have only tested the method in delivering curcumin, its contribution to cancer treatment will ultimately also come from the likelihood the method will work with other drugs as well.

“In cancer therapy, one of the measures that constrains a number of the drugs is their poor solubility,” Pan said. “Viability only becomes prominent when the drug becomes soluble in water. So, no matter how the drug is given, intravenously or orally, it needs to eventually be absorbed by the organs in the body.”

Pan’s team also hopes to prove that this method will be effective in killing cancer stem cells, in effect cancer’s root system.

“More and more it is becoming obvious that cancer stem cells are responsible for all these cancers to regrow,” Pan said. “Even if you are killing all the cells in the tumor, there would be a tiny population of cells with ‘stemness’ properties that could enable cancer cells to grow back and spread to other parts of the body. That is why even if a patient has been declared cancer free, doctors continue to monitor to see if cells regrow. However, if we can deliver therapy to cancer stem cells, we can prevent that from happening. As an ongoing research in our laboratory to find agents for stopping the growth of cancer stem cells, we will be looking into using these highly sophisticated self-assembled metallacycles for targeted therapies”

Does Monsanto’s Roundup cause cancer? Trial highlights the difficulty of proving a link

In this June 1, 2010 photo, central Illinois corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weed killer glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill. A handful of hardy weeds have adapted to survive glyphosate _ sold as Roundup and a variety of other brands _ which many scientists say threatens to make the ubiquitous herbicide far less useful to farmers. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

(The Conversation) Does glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weedkiller Roundup, cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma? This question is at issue now in a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court. Hundreds more claims have been cleared to proceed in a federal multi-district lawsuit.

Illinois corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, June 1, 2010.AP Photo/Seth Perlman

Much of this litigation is based on a 2015 determination by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. This report has come under heavy criticism, which is not surprising because there’s a lot of money at stake.

The IARC classification relied in part on experiments in mice. But is that enough to conclude the weed killer causes cancer in humans? Mice are not people, so probably not.

If it was simple to determine the cause of cancer in humans, scientists would do the right experiment and we’d know the answer pretty quickly.

But it’s not simple.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Proving causation in product liability lawsuits

Epidemiology is one of the sciences that provides evidence needed to prove cause and effect in medicine and public health. It is the most important tool for determining whether exposure to a given substance increases the risk of disease. The problem is that it is easy to do it badly, and a bad study is worse than no study at all.

In fact, after a special hearing examining the science on both sides of the glyphosate argument, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called epidemiology “loosey-goosey” and a “highly subjective field.” Nonetheless, he concluded that the views on both sides were reasonable and should be heard in court, with the verdict up to a jury.

I have spent much of my working life trying to help figure out why people get cancer. To illustrate how hard it is to prove causality, consider the question: Does smoking cause lung cancer?

Innumerable epidemiological studies since the 1940s have shown a strong association between smoking and lung cancer. But there has never been a randomized trial in humans. In addition, we know from experimental studies that smoking rats don’t get lung cancer.

For years, Big Tobacco dismissed observational studies in people (epidemiology) with the mantra that “association is not causation,” and avoided regulation. The scientific community was intimidated by this strategy for far too long. Eventually, the studies accumulated to the point that the association was overwhelming, and cause and effect could not be denied.

There are two main types of epidemiological study designs: cohort and case-control. In a cohort study, a large group of people – some smokers, some not – are followed over the years to see who gets sick. In a case-control study, a group of lung cancer patients (perhaps several hundred) are asked about their smoking history, along with an equal number of people without lung cancer.

Invariably, in cohort study after cohort study, smokers got sicker from heart disease, lung cancer and many other maladies over time. In most of these studies, scientists did their best to take account of other differences between smokers and non-smokers, so as to isolate the effect of smoking. Also invariably, in case-control studies patients with lung cancer were much more likely to have been smokers than people in the general population.

In the first case of its kind to reach trial, Dewayne Johnson is suing Monsanto, the maker of Roundup. The 46-year-old blames his 2014 cancer diagnosis on Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate.

Defining ‘proof’

When scientists are asked for a definition of proof, most of them use criteria such as “reproducibility” and “statistical significance” and “plausibility.” But who decides whether each of these criteria has been met? The answer is a panel of experts. It is unsettling to most scientists to hear that “proof” can only be defined as “a consensus of experts,” but this is true from physics to bird-watching. And what has been proven can later be unproven with new experts and/or new evidence.

Who chooses the experts? They include panels convened by the National Academies of Sciences, or advisory boards of professional societies such as the American College of Cardiology. The makeup of these panels can be challenged, and of course, people can choose to ignore the “experts” and believe what they want.

In health research, “causing” disease is defined as “increasing risk.” This does not mean that exposure to something like cigarettes is both necessary and sufficient to cause disease. Most heavy smokers never get lung cancer, and some lifelong non-smokers do. However, experts agree that smoking causes lung cancer because hundreds of observational epidemiological studies show that a heavy smoker has a risk of lung cancer 10 to 20 times higher than a non-smoker. This agreement among experts is the proof that smoking causes lung cancer.

U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry holds the report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service on the relationship of smoking to health, January 11, 1964. The report led to laws requiring warning labels on cigarette packages and a ban on broadcast cigarette ads. AP Photo/hwg

For many other potential hazards, the epidemiology is either inadequate or contradictory. One study may show an association between exposure and disease, while another shows no relationship. This can happen because the exposure does not cause the disease, and studies that do show a relationship are due to chance, bias and/or confounding – in other words, they are false positive results. It also can happen because the true exposure has not been accurately measured, so existing research is masking a real causative effect – also known as a false negative result.The process of proving cause in science is quite similar to a jury trial. Evidence is presented to a jury (the expert panel or committee), which renders a verdict. To a “reasonable” person, does the evidence rise to the level of guilt – or, in science, proof of cause and effect?

A health scientist sees proof of causation when evidence from epidemiology (observational studies in people) and toxicology (experiments in rats), and, to some extent basic science (does a chemical damage DNA in a test tube?) accumulates to the point where there is no other viable explanation for the evidence than cause and effect. Epidemiology is paramount, because it is a direct assessment of risk in human beings. It is analogous to circumstantial evidence in a jury trial.

Glyphosate is widely used on field crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat. USGS

Is circumstantial evidence enough?

The fact that smoking causes lung cancer is accepted beyond a reasonable doubt based on the circumstantial evidence of numerous observational epidemiological studies. A convincing case for guilt can rest entirely on circumstantial evidence when that evidence is extensive and strong enough to convince a panel of experts.

It will be harder for jurors in the Roundup trials to weigh epidemiological evidence that glyphosate caused plaintiffs’ cancer, because jurors are rarely experts and successful trial lawyers are exceptionally persuasive.

In my view, there are two crucial requirements for an equitable assessment of proof of causation from products like glyphosate or cigarettes. First, were the epidemiological studies well done? Second, how objective are the jurors and the expert witnesses?

Both science and the judicial system are highly imperfect. The verdicts in these trials could be wrong, and could be appealed. This happens as often in the worlds of science and medicine as it does in the courtroom.

It took many years to develop a broad consensus on cigarettes. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in the Roundup litigation, the same maybe true for glyphosate.

Curcumin Beats Malignancy

(Dr. Mercola) Besides giving Indian curries their rich golden color, turmeric contains a polyphenol called curcumin, which has been shown to possess many health benefits, including being a malignancy-fighting powerhouse. Curcumin’s health-boosting properties are well-documented and this single compound exhibits more than 150 potentially therapeutic actions.

With thousands of studies performed,1 researchers have shown curcumin has antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, antioxidant, antiparasitic, antiproliferative, pro-apoptotic and wound healing properties.

Animal studies have suggested curcumin may be useful in the treatment of a wide range of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurologic conditions, obesity and psychiatric disorders, as well as chronic illnesses affecting your cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems, eyes, kidneys, liver and lungs.2

Related: Turmeric’s Anti-inflammatory Properties Explained

While turmeric is widely available in powdered form, it contains a very small amount of curcumin, which is known to be poorly absorbed through your gastrointestinal tract. For these reasons, you’ll receive more health benefits from a curcumin extract. A typical anticancer dose is up to 3 grams (just under 1 teaspoon) of high-quality bioavailable curcumin extract, taken three to four times a day.

Because it’s a lipophilic (fat-loving) molecule, many curcumin preparations include some sort of oil or fat to improve its absorbability and bioavailability.

The Many Benefits of Curcumin

As the active ingredient in turmeric powder, curcumin is well-known for its broad range of curative properties. It has been used for thousands of years as a spice and beauty aid, and in both Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine to treat a wide range of maladies — from cancer to indigestion and heart disease to neurodegenerative conditions. Given its many antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, below are a few of the conditions responsive to curcumin:3,4

•Cancer prevention and treatment: Taking a curcumin supplement regularly may help prevent and treat cancer based on the fact it appears to block the blood supply to cancerous tumors, thereby suppressing the growth and replication of malignant cells.

•Heart health: Animal studies have shown curcumin can help regulate blood pressure and prevent heart disease. It may be particularly beneficial to reduce the incidence of atherosclerosis, also known as hardening of the arteries. In other studies, curcumin has been found to lower LDL and total cholesterol and prevent your blood from clotting.5

•Intestinal and bowel issues: Because curcumin stimulates your gallbladder to produce bile, it may help improve your digestion, reduce bloating and gas and soothe digestive disorders. When combined with conventional treatments, curcumin may help promote the remission of ulcerative colitis.6

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

•Neurodegenerative conditions: Curcumin may help prevent and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.7,8

Scientists investigating curcumin’s biological activities had this to say about the extent to which it plays a vital role in supporting your health:9 “Modern science has shown that curcumin modulates various signaling molecules, including inflammatory molecules, transcription factors, enzymes, protein kinases, protein reductases, carrier proteins, cell survival proteins, drug resistance proteins, adhesion molecules, growth factors, receptors, cell-cycle regulatory proteins, chemokines, DNA, RNA and metal ions.”

Curcumin Is a Powerful Weapon Against Malignancy

In animal-based lab research during the past 20 years, curcumin has been shown to have both cancer-prevention and cancer-treatment properties. Its usefulness in the treatment of colon cancer is particularly well established.10,11,12 One group of scientists investigating curcumin’s ability to suppress the proliferation of colon cancer cells by targeting a major cell-cycle protein, said:13

“Curcumin … is one of the most popular phytochemicals for cancer prevention. Numerous reports have demonstrated modulation of multiple cellular signaling pathways by curcumin and its molecular targets in various cancer cell lines. Cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2), a major cell-cycle protein, was identified as a potential molecular target of curcumin. Indeed, in vitro and ex vivo kinase assay data revealed a dramatic suppressive effect of curcumin on CDK2 kinase activity.”

Related: How To Use Turmeric To Kill Cancer

Other cancers in which curcumin has shown protective effects in rodent models include breast, bladder, brain, esophageal, kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate and stomach, to name a few.14 As noted by Dr. William LaValley — one of the leading clinical researchers and medical practitioners in the field of integrative cancer treatment, whom I’ve previously interviewed on this topic — curcumin appears to be universally beneficial for nearly every type of cancer treatment.

This is unusual considering cancer’s many varied molecular pathologies. One reason for this universal anticancer proclivity is curcumin’s ability to affect multiple molecular targets, via multiple pathways.

Once it gets into a cell, curcumin affects more than 100 different molecular pathways. And, as explained by LaValley, whether the curcumin molecule causes an increase in activity of a particular molecular target, or a decrease or inhibition of activity, studies repeatedly underscore its potent anticancer activity.

Notably, curcumin is nontoxic, and does not adversely affect healthy cells, suggesting it selectively targets cancer cells. In cases in which certain chemotherapy drugs are used, curcumin has been shown to work synergistically with the drugs to enhance the elimination of cancer cells.

Related: Turmeric and Diabetes

Woman Beat Myeloma Using Therapeutic Daily Dose of Curcumin

In terms of real-life success stories with this potent cancer-fighter, the British Medical Journal15,16 presented a case study on Dieneke Ferguson, age 57, who successfully treated blood cancer using curcumin. After complaining of high blood pressure, Ferguson was diagnosed with myeloma in 2007. Myeloma is a cancer that begins in plasma cells within your bone marrow, causing your plasma cells to become abnormal, multiply uncontrollably and release only one type of antibody that has no useful function.

Within 15 months, Ferguson’s myeloma advanced to stage 3 and she underwent several rounds of chemotherapy. In 2009, she had a stem cell transplant. None of the treatments were effective in beating the cancer. After stem cell therapy failed again, in 2011, Ferguson began taking daily doses of curcumin extract with bioperine (a black pepper extract) to aid absorption. She took 8 grams (a little over 2 teaspoons) every night on an empty stomach. The cancer stabilized.

A few months later, she began weekly hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which involves breathing pure oxygen in an enclosed chamber. Over the past five years, which incidentally is the average survival rate for myeloma, Ferguson’s cancer has remained stable and her blood counts are in the normal range. By all accounts, she enjoys a good quality of life. Ferguson continues to take her daily dose of curcumin and receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy once a week.

Ferguson’s doctors, who practice medicine at London’s Barts Health NHS Trust, believe she may be the first recorded case of curcumin being more effective than conventional treatments to beat cancer. They said:17

“A small but significant number of myeloma patients consume dietary supplements in conjunction with conventional treatment, primarily to help cope with the side effects of treatment, manage symptoms and enhance general well-being. Few, if any, use dietary supplementation as an alternative to standard antimyeloma therapy.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report in which curcumin has demonstrated an objective response in progressive disease in the absence of conventional treatment. The fact that our patient, who had advanced stage disease and was effectively salvaged while exclusively on curcumin, suggests a potential antimyeloma effect of curcumin.”

About her experience, Ferguson said,18 “I hope my story will lead to more people finding out about the amazing health benefits of curcumin. I also hope that as a result of the publicity, more research will be undertaken so curcumin may become freely available on the national health service and can help others.”

Suggestions for Using Curcumin Therapeutically

While turmeric is readily available in the spice section of nearly every grocery store, it’s important to realize if you want clinical results, it’s not enough to simply use turmeric as a spice in your cooking. The turmeric root itself contains only about a 3 percent curcumin concentration. To complicate matters further, curcumin is poorly absorbed by your body. According to LaValley:

“There is truly a broad array of disease that curcumin has significant potential for benefit. The challenge is how to get enough of it into the bloodstream to make a difference. That’s where the bioavailability of the product comes into play. There’s now a range of products on the market that allow substantial amounts of curcumin and metabolites of curcumin that are therapeutic … people now have much better options than what was available even five years ago.”

While I usually suggest raw foods, curcumin is an exception. When taking it in its raw form, from the turmeric root, you’d only be absorbing about 1 percent of the available amount. Even in supplement form it’s unlikely to provide the type of results reflected in scientific studies. That said, if you want to use curcumin therapeutically, you can try one of the following three alternatives:

Related: How to Optimize Curcumin Absorption – With Golden Milk Tea Recipe

1.Locate a high-quality turmeric extract. Look for an extract containing 100 percent certified organic ingredients, with at least 95 percent curcuminoids. The formula should be free of additives, excipients (substances added as a processing or stability aid) and fillers. Typical anticancer doses are up to 3 grams of good bioavailable curcumin extract, taken three to four times a day.

2.Make a microemulsion. Combine 1 tablespoon of raw curcumin powder with one or two egg yolks and 1 to 2 teaspoons of melted coconut oil. Use a high-speed hand blender to emulsify it. Keep in mind curcumin contains a strong yellow pigment that can permanently discolor clothing, kitchen tools and surfaces, so take care when using it in powder form.

3.Boil curcumin powder. Another strategy that can help increase absorption is to put 1 tablespoon of raw curcumin powder into 1 quart of boiling water. (The water must be boiling when you add the powder — it will not work well if you add the curcumin first and then heat the water.)

After boiling the mixture for 10 minutes you will have created a woody-tasting 12 percent solution that you can drink once cooled. With this method, the curcumin will gradually fall out of the solution over time, so be sure to drink it within four hours to achieve the best results.

Other Ways to Help Your Body Fight Malignant Disease

If you have cancer and are overweight, or have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and/or diabetes, then insulin and leptin resistance are very likely affecting your body’s ability to fight the disease.

From my perspective, a ketogenic diet — with or without intermittent fasting — would be a prudent treatment strategy to resolve that underlying problem and give your body a better chance of responding to cancer treatment. Once you’ve normalized your insulin and leptin, you don’t necessarily need to maintain a ketogenic diet, especially if you find it too restrictive. About this approach, LaValley states:

“I agree that a ketogenic diet is really appropriate in many cases, probably the significant majority of cases. It’s been known for probably 80 years or longer that solid tumors, and some of the blood cancers, are sugar-loving. I use a PET scan to demonstrate to patients … objective proof that the tumors they have in their body are sugar-avid. They’re taking up sugar at a rate much higher than the other regular healthy cells.

I want to drive home that message, so people are motivated to alter their diet to have a low [starchy] carb intake, causing their body to generate additional nutrient supply molecules called ketones … What that means is we’re trying to provide an anticancer, antagonistic pressure on the cancer cells by reducing the amount of sugar that’s readily available for uptake.

We do so by reducing the easily available sugar in the diet and compensating for the nutrient and sugar reduction by increasing healthy fats.”

In addition to cutting out sugar, it would also be prudent to assess your protein intake. Many Americans eat far more protein than required for optimal health. Importantly, excess protein stimulates your mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway which, while useful for building muscles, can be detrimental when treating cancer. This is the case because mTOR is a pathway that increases cellular proliferation, which you don’t want when it comes to cancer cells.

The formula I recommend for calculating protein intake calls for 1 gram per kilogram of lean body mass or 0.5 grams per pound of lean body weight. To determine your lean mass, first determine your fat mass. As an example, if your body fat mass is 20 percent, your lean mass is 80 percent of your total body weight. If you weigh 150 pounds, your lean mass would then be 120 pounds (150 X 0.8), and your protein requirement would be about 60 grams (120 X 0.5).

If you are doing vigorous exercise or are pregnant, you can add up to 25 percent more protein. If you need some encouragement with respect to those who are beating various forms of cancer by treating it as a metabolic disease, check out my previous article “Promoting Advances in Managing Cancer as a Metabolic Disease.”

Need a Doctor Familiar With Curcumin and Other Alternative Treatments?

LaValley is available to consult with you or your physician on a wide variety of health challenges, including cancer.19 He’s licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. and Canada. His medical clinic is located in Chester, Nova Scotia, where he sees patients, and he also spends time in Austin, Texas, where he conducts research.

When there, he’s available to consult with other physicians and their patients. Says LaValley, “For instance, if a patient has pancreatic cancer and the physician wants to implement one of the protocols I provide, I will do a consultation … and then make recommendations to the physician for implementation.”

LaValley acknowledges the many challenges he faces with respect to working within the medical establishment, mainly because there’s so much information that’s not readily known or understood by traditional doctors. In the U.S. and Canada, when a physician wants to administer one or more natural products like curcumin or some off-label pharmaceuticals for anticancer use, they very often fear recrimination or disciplinary action. He said:

“That is, I think, very unfortunate, because the evidence base does exist for [natural approaches] … I think the most important movement that needs to occur is for patients to recognize their own value in the decision-making process and to demand they have access to [alternative] therapeutic choices. They’re available, they’re supported in the evidence base, and [you] have the right to ask for them rather than just accept whatever the physician is offering in the conventional realm.”

Mainstream News Quietly Admits That Food Quality Is A Major Cause Of Cancer

(Natural Blaze by Alex Pietrowski) For years it has been a supposed mystery, but it is finally being acknowledged that a primary cause of cancer in the world today is diet. Studies are now showing that obesity plays an enormous role in one’s chances of getting cancer, and the main cause of obesity is the type of foods people eat. It is in large part a lifestyle disease, and the most important relevant lifestyle choice is food.

Overall, we estimated that 40.8% of incident cancer cases were attributable to exposure to the 24 factors included in the analysis (Table 2). Tobacco smoking was responsible for the greatest cancer burden, accounting for an estimated 15.7% of all incident cancer cases (2485 cases), followed by physical inactivity and excess body weight, which were responsible for an estimated 7.2% and 4.3% of incident cancer cases, respectively. All other exposures of interest were estimated to be responsible for less than 4.0% of incident cancer cases each. [Source]

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

More specifically, researchers are pointing out the connection between the body’s insulin response to food and cancer metabolism. In short, there is a paradigm shift taking place and we are admitting that food can either feed or starve cancer cells. Here, in a piece for The Los Angeles Times, writer Sam Apple explains this connection:

… researchers have made progress in understanding the diet-cancer connection. The advances have emerged in the somewhat esoteric field of cancer metabolism, which investigates how cancer cells turn the nutrients we consume into fuel and building blocks for new cancer cells.

Largely ignored in the last decades of the 20th century, cancer metabolism has undergone a revival as researchers have come to appreciate that some of the most well-known cancer-causing genes, long feared for their role in allowing cancer cells to proliferate without restraint, have another, arguably even more fundamental role: allowing cancer cells to “eat” without restraint. This research may yield a blockbuster cancer treatment, but in the meantime it can provide us with something just as crucial — knowledge about how to prevent the disease in the first place. [Source]

Related: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Does this mean that these new revelations about cancer and the foods which cause it will trigger a widespread shift in the consumption habits of ordinary people? Will people switch to real food and abandon fake food?

Could it also mean that major food companies will face some degree of liability for producing addictive foods which are extremely high in sugars, artificial sweeteners, refined carbohydrates and other ingredients which trigger the body’s insulin response?

Will we now see a link emerge between diabetes and cancer, since diabetes is now the fastest growing disease in America?

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Meanwhile, expensive cancer treatments are increasingly being recognized as a common detriment to surviving cancer, and all the while alternative treatments are still being suppressed and banished from the country.

The cancer industrial complex is negligent in warning people that chemotherapy is now known to actually make some cancers spread and make some tumors more aggressive. Government and its myriad regulatory agencies work diligently to prevent access to natural or alternative cancer treatments, and doctors and the mainstream media give the impression that the causes of cancer are a mystery. [Source]

It’s important to remember that there is a wealth of information on how diet affects both the likelihood to get cancer, but also how diet can play a significant role in surviving cancer. Celebrity Tommy Chong told us how diet and cannabis cured his cancer. Blogger and activist Chris Wark recorded his recovery from cancer with the help of improved diet, and now shares survivor stories.

It is also important to remember that programs like Raw for Thirty are demonstrating significant results in helping people to reverse the symptoms of diabetes by switching to a raw foods diet.

Related: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

Final Thoughts

Healthy choices clearly have a big impact on cancer, and now that mainstream sources are telling us that almost half of all cancers may potentially be preventable with dietary and lifestyle changes, we have all the info we need to drastically reduce cancer rates.

Read more articles by Alex Pietrowski.

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com. Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life.

This article (Mainstream News Quietly Admits that Food Quality is a Major Cause of Cancer) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alex Pietrowski and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.